Quincha and Lima's earthquake-resistant rebuilding rules
Quincha y normas de reconstrucción sismorresistente de Lima
- Date
- 1746 · confidence high
- Place
- Lima, Peru
- Credited to
- Viceroy Manso de Velasco and Lima's master builders
- Field
- Tools
What it is
After the 1746 earthquake and tsunami that levelled Lima and Callao, the city was rebuilt with low adobe walls on the ground floor and upper floors of quincha, a cane-and-timber frame plastered with mud. Light and flexible, quincha reduces the mass that moves in a quake.
Quincha is older (cane frames at Caral and in pre-Hispanic times); what is recorded here is its regulated use in 1746, nine years before Lisbon's gaiola. Engineers such as Louis Godin took part in the rebuilding.
What it led to
- height limits and upper floors of quincha across the viceregal city
- an Andean seismic-resistant tradition of light frames
- a precedent for post-disaster earthquake-resistant rebuilding rules